


drunk kids & catholics

by wolfchester



Series: for you i have so many words [2]
Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M, Gen, drunk call, this is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchester/pseuds/wolfchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyra’s left the state and Tim tries to convince himself he doesn’t need her anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drunk kids & catholics

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics are from 'split screen sadness' by john mayer and title is from 'drunk kid catholic' by bright eyes. both are great songs to listen to while reading this ♥

* * *

  

_And I don't know where you went when you left me but_

_Says here in the water you must be gone by now_

_I can tell somehow_

_One hand on the trigger of a telephone_

_Wondering when the call comes_

_Where you say it's alright_

_You got your heart right_

 

* * *

 

Tyra Collette has completed the thing she has wanted to do since she was ten years old.

She got the hell out of Texas.

And now she’s twenty years old, living in a studio apartment in San Francisco, studying law and political science at USF and working at the local Applebee’s on the side (the manager at the Dillon store hooked her up with a job in San Fran). For her birthday she travelled to Washington, D.C. and took a cab to the White House, where she stared at the building, took a few photos, and remembered what she’d said to a boy in the back of a pickup truck a year ago.

(Tyra hasn’t been to Paris or Hawaii yet, but that’s for next year’s birthday, she thinks.)

San Francisco is good to Tyra Collette. The city is always colourful and busy, there’s a bakery down the road from her apartment that sells the _best_ croissants, and she can see the Golden Gate Bridge out of her bedroom. She calls her mom every few days and has weekly Skype chats with Mindy, Billy and the kids. She never asks about Tim, even though she knows he still lives down the road from the married Riggins’. In this way, she keeps up to date about the happenings in Dillon. (She wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but a part of her misses the small town. Seems you can take the girl out of Texas but you can’t take the Texas out of the girl.)

She buys fancy clothes and dyes her hair brown, so that anyone looking at her would have no idea she grew up in the flannel-shirt-and-faded-jeans-wearing hick town of Dillon, Texas. She likes it that way. Yeah, maybe Tyra misses her hometown a little bit, but San Francisco is her _dream_.

Tyra’s days are long and hard, and although she’s exhausted a lot of the time, she still has trouble falling asleep at night. There’s always something pulling on her mind, like the next assignment she has to complete, or the fact that she has to work an extra shift at Applebee’s because one of her workmates is in hospital. Sometimes, just sometimes, she thinks about a boy back in Texas who drank too much and did too little, but loved her in that special way of his.

She gets home from work on a Thursday night to find two messages waiting on her answerphone. Tyra sighs and pours herself a glass of wine before settling down on the couch to listen to the messages. She recognises the rough drawl of Tim Riggins immediately and smiles unwittingly. He’s never called her once in the year since she moved to San Fran. The first few months she always wondered why, but now she knows that sometimes people grow up and move on. Tyra did. It’s no surprise that Tim probably did, too. So that’s why it’s a little confusing for her to hear his voice through the phone.

_“Tyra? Hey Tyra. How’s life in the big city, huh? San Fran-cis-co.”_

Tyra knows right away that the kid’s drunk out of his mind. Unlike most people, when Tim’s drunk his words don’t slur together or become incomprehensible. He just speaks his mind. Honesty tumbles out of him like a wave of bitterness and to be frank, she’s a little nervous about what’s coming next.

 _“Always knew you would get out. Whenever you set your mind to something, you always achieve it. I’m- I’m proud of you, Tyra.”_  She smiles and rests her head on her elbow, staring at the receiver and trying to conjure up a picture in her mind of what Tim could have looked like when he made this call. Messy hair, probably. Beer in his hand, definitely. Flannel shirt, what else?

 _“I wish I could have gotten out. I never really had any reason to. Dillon always been good to me. I’m, uh- I’m working at Buddy’s now...it pays okay I guess. Enough that I can start building that house I’d always said I’d build. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I just-”_ she hears him sigh and take a breath. _“You know I miss you, right?”_

Her body stills at that phrase, and she closes her eyes, whispering: “Tim…” like he’s sitting across from her and not a hundred miles away.

“That was all I wanted to say I guess. I mean, I’m drunk as hell but you probably already knew that. I’ll probably regret this in the morning. Bye.”

The phone clicks silent and Tyra hangs her head and cries. She’s not entirely sure why she’s crying. Maybe it’s because hearing a familiar voice other than her mom’s or Mindy’s brings back memories she’d rather forget. Maybe it’s because she’s just tired and stressed and needs a good night’s sleep. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because she actually misses this boy.

(She’d hate to admit it, but it’s probably the latter.)

  
  


Back in Dillon, Tim hangs up his phone and stares at the receiver like it’s about to jump up and kill him. He shouldn’t have said that. He really shouldn’t have. He knows better than to make drunk calls to a girl he used to love (still loves, maybe).

 _You know I miss you, right?_ Goddamnit, he thinks, what have I done?

He rubs his eyes hard, puts his half-empty beer bottle down, and makes his way towards his bedroom. It’s quiet outside in the darkness, which is bad because it leaves room for him to think about San Francisco and a girl who moved away and probably isn’t ever coming back.

It hurts to think about her.

It hurts to think about her face, her smile, the way she used to kiss him. It hurts to think about watching her walk around his house wearing nothing but his plaid shirt. It hurts to think about the things that could have been, the people they could have become, what they could have done together. But look at them? She’s making her dreams come true in a city he’s never even been to before and he’s sitting here, alone in the dark, a college dropout with only a few thousand dollars to his name.

Tim sighs, pours himself a nightcap, and lies down to sleep, trying not to think about a girl and all the things he never got to say.

 

* * *

 

_I called because I just_

_Need to feel you on the line_

_Don't hang up this time_

_And I know it was me who called it over but_

_I still wish you'd fought me 'til your dying day_

_Don't let me get away_

 

* * *

 

**end**

 


End file.
